Sunday, 22 October 2006

The Broken Virgin

by Susan Abraham

And so she sat now in her innocenceand wept like a womanwhose body stretched too old for love,whose delicious sheenturned past the tide to go elsewhere,who lost her skin somewhere onthe high slippery sea of grief whereshe tripped and fellon a needle-sharp shell that wouldgorge her flesh like human sticks andsmash the trollop in her waiting heart.

And when she had thought theymust part while soaking inthe unseen bloodstain on the fabricthat had clothed herpurity on the bright light in the slashingpoison of the night to make a wall ofshame and that was how he found herhis broken virgin, near her hut in theriver with herfinished game, and her shatteredsplintered name.

Her nudity jarred him in the eye whenhe played I-spy to make him stareandshiver and quickly catch the glimmerbefore it went away again and she nolonger remembered him. But today,look how tame her breasts, like tinycones and silent to growing ambitionsand now still untouched by theold-fashionedpull of desire, how thin her legsthathad wheedled and swung past himwith nary a scream.

And that was how he found her atlast, at last never to return to thehollow of her sorrow where adamsel's moment breaks and lovecatches up on its terrifying ache,now he must turn around andrun away again, would the sea washup her long black hair into histhoughtseven as he sought to remember itsscent like a hidden magnolia a softunsuspecting rose and the tidewould finally rise up to his noseas he drowned in the everlastingmoment of her blisteringsexual burn.